(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of allocating an upstream bandwidth. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method of allocating an upstream bandwidth that effectively receives segment data in a cable modem termination system.
The present invention is supported by the IT R&D program of MIC/IITA [2006-S-019-02, The Development of Digital Cable Transmission and Receive System for 1 Gbps Downstream].
(b) Description of the Related Art
As digital convergence is rapidly progressing, cable networks are being widely used in fields of video-on-demand service, high-speed Internet service, and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) service as well as using the existing broadcasting signal. Accordingly, the cable network is used to provide a communication-broadcasting convergence service.
The data over cable service interface specification (DOCSIS) 3.0 defines a data transmission technique, which uses a cable network, as one of cable techniques that are used to provide the above-mentioned communication broadcasting convergence service. In this case, upstream/downstream channel combination defined in the DOCSIS 3.0 is a technique that provides two or more downstream channel receiving devices and two or more upstream channel transmitting devices to a cable modem (CM) in order to increase data transmission speed between a cable modem termination system (CMTS) and the cable modem.
However, time required for receiving data from the cable modem may depend on how the cable modem termination system allocates an upstream bandwidth.